Cams watched the proceedings. No matter where they were in the ship, everyone saw what was happening.
Herrick and Chanticler closed a valve and severed this pipe. They connected one end to the emergency air input on the old spacesuit, using geckoflex and duct tape to seal the bond. Crabtree, even then, could not quite grasp what they had in mind for him. Through the smeared faceplate of the old helmet, Bella thought she could see only puzzled curiosity on his face.
Then they turned on the steam.
Parry took some of his team to make a desperate attempt to stop the torture. No matter what else happened, that would always be to their credit. Eventually they broke through one of the sealed airlocks, but by then it was too late. Stoked up on adrenalin and steroids, the murderers came close to killing Parry as well.
When Crabtree was dead, when he had finally stopped thrashing in agony, they recovered the Orlan fifteen. They took his obscene roasted corpse to the nearest airlock and ejected him into space. But they kept back the suit. Now was not a time to start throwing things away.
TWELVE
Even for the victors, the next three days were not easy. By the end Bella was removed from whatever lingering hold on command she might have retained. She was taken to one of the standard crew sleeping pods and locked inside, without food, water or access to ShipNet. It was a day before anyone came to check that she was still alive, a day before she could ask any questions, but through the thin plastic sheet that served as a door, the ship’s noisy convulsions provided a kind of news service of their own. She was close enough to the gymnasium for sounds to travel and she listened with a quiet mammalian attentiveness, like a shrew in a hole.
She heard Jim Chisholm, his voice strained with effort, desperately trying to forge some sort of reconciliation between the two shipboard factions. Because he was trusted, people were prepared to listen when he urged amity. What was done was done, Chisholm said. A life had been taken: wasn’t that enough blood for one ship?
Let it end with Thom Crabtree. Let it end here and now. She heard Ryan Axford making similar placatory noises. Axford said he would refuse to treat anyone he believed to have perpetrated violence against another crewmember. People liked and respected Axford, too, but he was a doctor, with a duty of care; they wondered if he really meant it. Anyway, he wasn’t the only medic on the ship. There were still doubts about Rockhopper’s true situation. The big question — whether to run for home or ride Janus into the night — remained painfully unresolved. Some of Svetlana’s faction were coming around to the idea that Janus was now their only hope of long-term survival, and that it would be suicide to leave the slipstream.
But there were others amongst her people who still thought it was better to try to get home, no matter how unlikely their chances of survival. They still thought Earth would find a way to rescue them, even as they fell away from the Sun like a stone down a well. As each hour passed, their argument became less sustainable, but that did not stop them fighting their corner — and fight they did, too. Bella heard the same frenzied arguments over and over again throughout the long hours of her confinement. They never quite boiled over, but there were times when people had to be restrained from clawing each other apart. And all the while Janus was accelerating, and pulling Rockhopper with it.
Then came Svetlana’s speech.
She made it over the shipwide speaker, so that everyone would hear it. Pumps and generators were set to idle. People listened wordlessly, without even a cough of interruption.
“Crew of Rockhopper,” she began. “We find ourselves in a situation. We didn’t ask for it; we certainly didn’t want it. That doesn’t mean that some of us didn’t anticipate it, that some of us didn’t try to do something about it. I tried to persuade Bella to turn this ship around before we got to Janus, and I tried to turn it around when we got here.
“I failed on both occasions, and you must believe that no one is sorrier for that than me. I know there are some of you who feel we should make another attempt, that we should turn back around, leave the slipstream and lose as much speed as we can. Believe me, there’s a part of me that feels the same way, that maybe we should just try, and see how far we get.
“But we can’t do it.
“DeepShaft screwed us, people. They knew we didn’t have enough fuel to make it to Janus and back, but Powell Cagan wasn’t going to let that stop him. They hacked into us, altered our fuel data, made it look as if we could do this — but we never could. Powell Cagan knew from the word go that this was a suicide mission, and he signed off on it knowing full well what would happen to us. Not just Powell, either, but everyone at DeepShaft who was a part of it. He didn’t put this together on his own.
“Ask yourselves this: do these sound like the kind of people likely to put time and money into a rescue operation? Not just any old rescue operation, but the most technically ambitious mission ever mounted in the system: one that will require a better, faster ship than anything currently sitting on anyone’s drawing board — including the Chinese. And that ship would need to reach us before our last power supplies run dry.
“It isn’t doable, people. No will in the world can save us now.
“But we’re not going to die. Like I said, we didn’t ask for this. But now we’re in it, we might as well make the best of it. Bella dealt us a hand. It’s a pretty shitty one. But we have to play it.
“We’re staying with Janus. There’ll be no further attempts to escape the slipstream. I’ve taken steps to ensure that the fusion engine can’t run in cruise mode again. It’ll keep giving us ship power, and we can use the fuel for Avenger and Crusader when we need ‘em, but it’ll never push Rockhopper again. That’s the hand I’m dealing us. It says we have to stay here, no matter how difficult it gets, no matter how tempting the alternative might be. The alternatives will kill us.
“We’re going to land on Janus. There’s still a nice cap of water ice on the sternward face, and we should be safe there. No matter how fast Janus gets, we’ll have two hundred kilometres of shielding between us and the bow. That should be enough.
“We can live. We’ll have power from the engine in the short term, so keeping warm won’t be an issue. We’ll have light and amenities. In the long run, we’ll find a way to use Janus for power instead, but that isn’t a bridge we have to cross tomorrow.
“We have closed-cycle waste-recycling systems. We have aeroponics racks and zeolite beds. As long as that machinery keeps working, as long as the plants keep growing, we won’t go hungry. We’ll lose some water through the hull, but we can top up with Janus ice whenever we need to. We have enough medicine for the immediate future: not enough to work miracles, but enough to keep most of us alive. We have centrifuges for gravity. We have landers and tractors and surface domes. We have robots.
“We have fifty thousand tonnes of ship that DeepShaft ain’t getting back in one piece.”
That got a muted cheer that echoed around the ship.
“We dock Rockhopper with Janus just the way we’d dock a mass driver: dig a deep pit and line it with sprayrock. Then we back the ship in, engine-first, nice and easy.
“Then we’d better start learning to like Janus, because we’re going to be here for a while.”
* * *
Svetlana’s speech did not work miracles, but Bella had to concede that there was a subtle shift in the tension levels throughout the ship in the hours that followed. Minor rumbles of dissension were swiftly quashed. Svetlana had indeed taken a spanner (or more likely a teleoperated fist) to some delicate part of the fusion engine, rendering it unstable for sustained thrust. Bella wondered how much pain that act of tactical sabotage must have caused her.
So Svieta had come round to Bella’s point of view. In a perfect world, that would have been enough to let them see eye to eye again, but Bella knew better than that. It would take more than unity of purpose to heal the rift between them.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” Bella said as Parry slid aside the compartment
door.
Parry removed his red cap and scratched his scalp. He looked dog-tired, waxy and unshaven, stress oozing from his pores. “Craig didn’t want to talk to you,” Parry said, and she picked up something in his words beyond the surface content of the statement. Bella thought of everything she knew about Craig Schrope, everything she knew about the type of man he was, and nodded.
“Craig doesn’t want to talk to anyone, does he?”
“Craig’s having a tough time adjusting,” Parry said. “Which isn’t to say that it’s exactly easy for the rest of us, but —”
“It’ll be harder for Craig. Much, much harder. He’s company to the marrow, Parry. But the company doesn’t exist any more — not as far as we’re concerned. It’s just us and Rockhopper. Craig’s little world is falling further away with every passing second.”
“We’re working without him. Maybe he’ll come round — maybe he won’t.”
“You never liked him or his kind.”
“I’m just trying to find a way to run this ship. If Craig makes that easier, he’ll become a part of it. If he doesn’t, we’ll manage without him.”
“And where does Svetlana fit into this? Or the other chiefs, for that matter?”
“You know who came with us and who didn’t,” Parry said, with no apparent rancour. “Right now, Svetlana and I are running operations. We have the support of two-thirds of the crew, more or less.”
“Two murderers amongst them.”
“They’ll be dealt with.” The way he said that scared her more than anything else. “You know I did everything in my power to prevent what happened.”
“If you’d sided with me, Thom Crabtree wouldn’t have had to do what he did.”
“And if you’d listened to Svieta we’d never have ended up where we are today. Let’s not play the blame game, shall we?”
“Fine with me,” Bella said. “What game would you rather play?”
“The one where we pull this ship together. The people who sided with Craig can run things for the time being, but we’ll need everyone’s help if we’re to start looking beyond the next few weeks. That’s why I need to start healing wounds.”
“Beginning with me,” Bella said.
“I need something to appease the returners, bring them back into the fold.”
“My head on a plate?”
“No,” he said, but without the reflexive dismissal she had been expecting, as if her execution had at least been one possibility for discussion. “What we need…” Parry stumbled, and was suddenly unable to meet her eyes. “You’re going to stay here until we’re down. I’ll make sure you’re kept comfortable, in better conditions than you’ve been in for the last day.”
“I’m hearing a ‘but’.”
“You won’t be allowed contact with anyone. The only people you’ll speak to will be me and someone from the medical section.”
“I need to talk to Svieta,” Bella said urgently. “She doesn’t want to talk to you. Ever again.”
“This ship needs me, Parry. I know I’ve burnt our friendship, but this is about more than that. I’ll submit to Svieta’s authority if that keeps her happy, but give me enough power to make a difference. Give me enough to help.”
“You’ve been deposed, Bella. The way Svieta sees it is you blew critical command decisions when there was still time to make things right. You took us deeper into the incident pit when we could still have climbed out. Deeper and deeper, until the sides were too steep.”
“I also saved this damned crew from a slow death in deep space. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“That’s… that’s by the by.”
“I expected better of you, Parry.”
“This is the best you’re going to get. I’m sorry, Bella. This isn’t exactly a picnic for any of us. It’s not as if we’ll be partying it up while you’re locked away. We’ll be surviving. That’s all. You’ll have the easier time of it, frankly.”
“Look into my eyes and say that.”
He shook his head, not looking her way. “When the ship’s down, when we’ve established some kind of stable presence on Janus, you’ll be taken away somewhere. Svetlana doesn’t want you around any more.”
* * *
Svetlana sat in Bella’s old office, wondering what she should do with the fish. For now she fed them as best she could, and ignored their dim, accusatory expressions, the way their constantly working mouths seemed to whisper conspiracies.
The Ship was quieter now than it had been in weeks, and for the most part the crew had come round to her authority. They were even calling it the Interim Authority. It had nothing to do with DeepShaft, and everything to do with survival. Pushing forward, breath by breath, inch by inch, no matter what it took.
Saul Regis knocked on the open door. A Lind loyalist, Regis had never needed persuading that Janus was their only hope of survival. But the death of Crabtree had touched him on some emotional register Svetlana had barely recognised in him before.
“They’re going to pay, Parry told me.”
“Yes,” she said. And it was true: the two men were in custody; no matter what else happened, they would never see Earth again.
Regis pushed a flexy across to her. “Then it has to be done properly.”
“Properly, Saul?”
He scratched at his gut through the thin fabric of his sweatshirt. “You can’t just… do it to them. There have to be words. There has to be a ceremony.”
“We’re miners, Saul. No one gave us the book on capital law.”
“Then we have to make our own book. No waiting for instructions from home. This has to be something we do. Communities make law. We need law, some kind of judicial apparatus.”
Something about his presence made Svetlana shiver, and she looked down at the flexy with dread. A static frame filled the image window: a group of figures crowded around a campfire in some weirdly lit desert landscape, with a cloud-streaked pink sky and too many moons. The figures wore body-hugging costumes and kinky boots, with lots of equipment and weapons hanging from their belts, sleekly moulded in matt silver. Their hairstyles and makeup were meant to look futuristic, but actually looked twenty or thirty years out of date. One man knelt by the campfire while another pointed a weapon at the side of his head. Next to the man with a gun, a tall, black-clad, clerical-looking alien read from a kind of scroll.
“Fuck, Saul,” she said, as recognition clicked in, “this is —”
“Cosmic Avenger,” he said, before she had a chance to continue. “Season four, episode five. Avenger drops through a plenum gash into the Unmapped Zone, out of range of Terrafleet communications. With the ship damaged, Lieutenant Theobald attempts to seize control from Captain Underhill —”
“Saul,” she said, softly, as if speaking to a sleepwalker, “Saul… this is just a TV show. A bad TV show from my childhood, which no one even took seriously back then.” She handed back the flexy with a shudder of distaste. “This is not some kind of… life manual. What are you actually suggesting — that we all start acting as if we believe that this is real?”
“The execution scene’s an acknowledged classic,” Regis said. “The writing in that fourth-season arc… Underhill’s speech at the execution… I know a lot of people think Star Crusader was better, but it really wasn’t. Of course, they’ll never understand that.”
She kept waiting for Regis to blink, to show some indication that this was at best a sick joke at an inappropriate time. But there was no crack in that mask of sincerity.
She tried again. “You really think this speech —”
“I’m not saying copy it word for word.” He shook his head, as if that was absurd. “It’s just that when Underhill said what she said — how things were looking for the crew, how Underhill knew what she had to do but regretted having to do it all the same… the template of it…” He trailed off, with the air of someone who thought they had made their point convincingly enough. “We could do a lot worse.”
“I
’m sure we could,” she said. “Thank you for the input, Saul. Now please — get out of my office.”
He pressed the flexy to his chest, where it softened to bend itself around him. “I just think it needs to be done right,” he said. “For Thom Crabtree.”
She watched him leave, aghast at what had taken place but not entirely surprised by it either.
For some of her crew, the knowledge that they were now prisoners of Janus was already a kind of death. She knew, with an acute sense of precognition, that there would be suicides in the times that lay ahead. She thought she could predict with some accuracy who would choose that option, too.
But for a tiny minority, Janus would be a kind of liberation. The old world, with its bewildering emotional and political complexities, was receding. What lay ahead would be simpler and more emblematic. Just as some people lived a kind of half-life until a war came along, at which point they flourished, so the austere simplicities of Janus might be attractive to a man like Saul Regis. A slate wiped brutally clean.
He had been gone a long time before Svetlana picked up her own flexy and navigated ShipNet, looking for the same ancient media files Regis must have already mined. She had no intention of copying the words of the execution — the very thought revolted her — but there could be no harm in simply looking at what had happened.
Could there?
* * *
Preparations for the mating of Janus and Rockhopper swallowed days. Svetlana dreamed multicoloured simulations and woke from fevered hours of stress analysis in which numbers and equations had battled like epic protagonists.
Once Rockhopper was down there would be no way of lifting it from Janus again. Gravity on Janus was a feeble three hundred and fifty times weaker than on Earth. A person weighed next to nothing. But a fifty-thousand-tonne space vehicle still needed one hundred and fifty tonnes of thrust to lift itself aloft, which was a lot more than the steering and station-keeping motors could supply. Even using the landers as tugs, Rockhopper would come in hard, punching down into the pit with all the force of a skyscraper-sized battering ram. The stress analysis said the ship would hold together, but the computations were mind-numbingly complex, and an error anywhere, however tiny, could mean doom.
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